Shattered Honor
by Amanthya
Summary: The untold story of Aral Vorkosigan’s first wife, first shocking affair, & the first time his honor lay shattered at his feet.
1. Chapter 1

**Shattered Honor**

"Reputation is what others know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."--Aral Vorksosigan, A Civil Campaign.

**Chapter One**

_Unfaithful, unfaithful._ The vile little refrain bounced around inside his head, and he gritted his teeth. Dishonor.

He gripped his sword even as blood spilled over his hand, making the hilt slippery and red. It dug in deep. The other man sank to his knees when he pulled away, one hand going toward the hole in his stomach. The other held his own sword as tightly as his shaking hand was able too.

"Always wanted to be killed by a jealous husband," he said with a gasp of breath, his self-mocking smile fading as he looked up. "Only at age eighty."

His opponent merely stared down at him, and did not offer false words of comfort, and the light in the fallen man's eyes went dim. He had played his part with all due flair, but Aral had no interest in playing his. No artistic phrases to reveal his rage came forth, nor angry wishes for the god of the next world to forgive his treachery.

He left him and turned to see another man coming towards him, his sword still encased in its sheath.

"Aral," he said quietly. "Please forgive me. I did not mean for this to happen."

"We will begin on the count of three," Aral said in stiff formality, ignoring his words.

"I cannot fight you, I deserve to die."

"One."

His hands were still at his side. "Please, I beg of you!"

"Two."

"I will not fight you. Please, just kill me. I want to die. I have nothing left in this world to live for."

He felt unreasonably cheated. He'd come here as the one dishonored. It was he who had to right to feel shamed, angry, and empty. Yet this man before him had the gall to beg to be killed? To not fight, to not give him the cathartic release of well-deserved revenge? How dare he!

"Fight, damn you!" he yelled, hitting him. The older man crumpled and did not get up.

"Ever since I lost my wife, I've had nothing left. But I had no right to go after yours. And so I am alone and dishonored. I deserve to die."

Aral pulled him to his feet and hit him again, but still he would not fight. Finally he killed him in the middle of his begging, feeling even more at a loss than before. He left the two men where they had fallen, coincidently close together, and covered himself again with his jacket to hide the spill of blood on his shirt.

He traveled quickly by foot to his wife's apartment in the capital. She'd never given up her former housing to live with him in Vorkosigan House when he was home on leave, and he'd ended up moving much of his belongings over there just to spend time with her without taking her away from her active social life. She might not even be there at this time of afternoon, but he could wait for a while.

Reaching the guardless door, he tapped in the entry code and went inside. He strode into the entry room, which she called the receiving room, and saw the jacket-hanger and shoe basket neatly set up against the wall. With a brief, sardonic smile at the normalcy of it, he took off his jacket and hung it on a peg. In doing so he once again revealed his bloodied shirt and as he turned back he heard a gasp.

"Stasya," he said.

The short dark curls at the side her face were entwined with small jeweled ribbons, the rest done up in a bun, and they sparkled in the sunlight coming through the window. He wished he'd had time to close the curtains.

"What happened?" She didn't move, her eyes wide, beautiful in a long rose colored dress.

"Tell me," he said. "How long have you been having those affairs behind my back?"

Her dark eyes narrowed and her lips thinned. "Tell me what you have done."

She didn't seem ashamed at all, or in the least bit worried about him. Betrayal hit him in the stomach, nauseating pain that almost keeled him over. It was her doing as much as theirs. And it appeared she had no regrets. "What I have done?" he repeated, his voice low and soft. "I have corrected the problem of your infidelity, at least so far as your lovers are concerned."

After a moment the meaning of his words registered and she gasped. "You killed them! You...you bastard!" Tears welled up in her eyes, but her expression was full of anger. "You leave me alone in this God-forsaken city and then have the nerve to kill my companions?"

"Ah!" He gave a bark of a laugh. "Your companions, I see. How very lady-like to use a euphemism. They were not your companions, they were the men you slept with while I was away. And you...are an adulterous, lying little Vor brat like all the women in this city."

_I loved you._

She trembled with rage, nails digging into her palms and letting loose little droplets of blood that seeped between her fingers. She whirled away in a flowing cloud of material and went around the corner towards their room. He did not follow her. Instead he took up his jacket once again and returned to his ship to await arrest in his quarters.

A drunken daze followed that, and he slept until a chime at his door woke him. Ah, so they were here to take him away. He sat up and dragged himself to the door, opening it.

Piotr stood on the other side, and Aral almost fell over.

_Shit. I could've handled being taken away by anyone else but to send my own father..._So no one else had been brave enough to face him.

"Aral," Piotr said, looking up and down his rumpled clothes and bloodshot eyes. "I gather you've heard the...rumors going around about Stasya." His eyes were concerned but he did not do his son the disservice of continuing in the hallway. He motioned inwards. "Can I come in?"

Confused, Aral stepped back and shut the door behind his father, who sat on the edge of a chair. "Son...unfortunately, I've brought you worse news than that."

He wanted to laugh, and indeed, some of his control broke; a strangled laugh slipped past his lips. Piotr looked up uneasily before continuing.

"Two of her lovers," yes, Piotr would not mince words, "killed themselves in a duel this afternoon, and Stasya found out. She killed herself, son."

The room spun dizzily, and he almost fell over. "What?"

"She used your service plasma arc. It burned away her face. You should've left it at the apartment." His father rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at the floor, frowning, as if catching himself blaming his son and regretting it. "I'm sorry. You can make the funeral arrangements yourself, or I can do that for you. Or we can leave it up to some professionals. Anyway, I...didn't want you to find out on the street when you came home."

This was hardly better.

His father guided him through packing, out the door and to Vorkosigan House, all the while barking at the sympathizers who popped up--interested gossipers, as they really were--all around him who questioned him, eyes alight with fascination while their lips formed sorry frowns.

Once at home the first thing he did was find his way to the wine cellar to find something suitably vile to down him to unconsciousness once again. He couldn't stand any more of this false sympathy, or his false innocence. He carried some brandy up to his room (his father saw him but said nothing) and had more than half the bottle in his stomach when Ges Vorrutyer opened his bedroom door.

"Ah. As I expected you to be." He sat down on the floor beside Aral, leaning against the bed. "So you've taken it hard."

He tried to glare at his old friend, but his eyes weren't working properly, nearly crossing. "She was my wife."

"You'd been married less than a year, and you were away more than half of the duration of your marriage," Ges said logically. "I gather you're more upset about the scandal than any lost love."

Aral let him think what he wanted. It didn't bother him so much, but the rest of the world...He pulled himself more upright. "Tell me. What are they saying? About...everything."

"They are saying," Ges said easily, in a documentary-narrator tone, "that the lovely Stasya Vorkosigan married too young to a man whom she hardly knew, who was away too often on duty. She had affairs she thought her husband would never find out about, but when her lovers found out about each other, they dueled. And because she knew and loved them better than her husband, she killed herself." Ges lifted the brandy bottle, examining it. "Unless, of course, he killed her himself after he discovered the cause of her distress--the deaths of her dueling lovers." He sniffed the brandy experimentally, and frowned in distaste, setting it back down.

If he wasn't already sick to his stomach, he'd had become so now. "Am I not to be questioned?"

"You were reported in your quarters for almost an hour before the estimated time of her death. Why would they question you?"

He didn't really know what to say to that, in the state he was in, so he slid back down and found himself titling sideways, to fall against Ges's shoulder.

Ges left him there. The only re-arranging he did of his friend was to straighten him out a bit by putting an arm around him. "Well, now. Whatever shall you do next?"

"I don't know. Whatever I do will only make them talk more."

"Don't you know the only way to shut them up is to shock them into silence?" his friend said.

He peered at him. "And how do I do that?"

"Funny you should ask," Ges answered, finally taking a tiny sip of the brandy.

Aral watched him, but couldn't, in his fuzzy brain, figure out what he meant, and gave up. "Okay," he said, though he didn't know why.

Ges smiled faintly, and let Aral take the bottle back and down the rest of the brandy.

"Okay," he echoed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

.**  
**

He slitted his eyes open, and the light found the tiny openings and struck viciously. He groaned.

He tried to make his body roll over, but it didn't respond, and so he put all of his effort into turning his head, but it was for naught.

A triple-knock, tap, tap-tap, sounded; his father's courteous attention-getter. The sounds echoed in his head, dancing around in the fog of his hang-over. "Whmm?"

The door opened and soon Piotr's face loomed over his. "You're going to sleep your leave away?"

He blinked very slowly, gathering his thoughts. "Ashide from the fun'ral, what have I to do?" he mumbled.

His father's lips thinned in disapproval. "You can't spend your entire time being drunk, hung-over,  
or unconcious. It isn't becoming." You're a Vorkosigan, for God's sake, went unsaid, but it was understood. Every male of his bloodline that was not an active count had been a soldier, and even the counts had been so before taking their place as a District ruler. They had survived worse things than a death in the family.

So he found himself sitting in an uncomfortably stiff chair at polished wooden table meant for large-party luncheons, staring down at a plate of usually succulent meat he couldn't bring himself to eat. He'd originally been glad that his father had other things to do, but now the silence felt oppressive, with the servants discreetly hovering far enough back for privacy. He rubbed at his jawline, square and masculine, now currently covered in scruffy growth that made him look like a bum, and not an attractive one, as his reflection in hallway mirror had testified to even his bleary eyes.

'Goes with the blood-shot eyes, at least.'

"You look like hell," Ges's amused voice floated in.

Too tired to jump, Aral raised his head.

"Hydrate yourself before you pass out," Ges advised, taking a seat and pulling it closer to his. Without asking permission, he plucked Aral's fork from the fine plate and took a bite. "A bit spicy," he commented.

His shiny dark hair was neat and clean, as usual, and his velvety eyes bore no trace of sadness. His clothes were neatly pressed, civilian, and elegantly masculine, as befitting his status. Nothing out of the ordinary, there.

"Why are you here?" Aral asked finally, when his lunch was halfway gone. He snatched up his drink and downed much of it before his friend could get that too, out of sheer bad-tempered stinginess.

"I came to comfort you," Ges said grandly, dropping the fork back onto the plate with a clang that, an hour ago, would've made Aral wince. "Actually, my dear grandfather dispatched me with some last-minute confirmations about Stasya's service. I spoke to your father before he left. Thought I'd see how you were while I was here. Took a while to find you, though. If the guards hadn't known me, they surely would've kicked me out as suspicious. Whatever are you doing in the formal dining room?"

"I wasn't thinking," he said brusquely.

'I wanted to be alone.'

Ges looked him over, some of the animation fading from his face as he took in the rumpled clothes and unkept hair. "You need to get out. Get some sunlight." Was that sincere concern?

"Why aren't you sorry?" he burst out in response, his hands, resting on the table, tightening into fists. "She was your sister, damn it!"

'Leave me alone, for God's sake.'

An odd little half-smile quirked Ges's lips, almost a sneer, unmoved.

Really looking at him, for the first time in a long time, Aral noticed how much he resembled his late sister. They'd had the same fine features, high cheekbones and dark brown eyes. Both siblings taller than him, though not by much. How could Ges look in a mirror and not think of his sister?

"Stasya and I were never close," Ges reminded him, lashes lowering briefly to study the table, or perhaps some memories he viewed in his mind's eyes, kept hidden away. "Our father...favored me, and it always set us apart."

"I remember that...but he died when you were so young. I should think you'd have grown closer by now."  
His anger fading, he released his death-grip on his glass as the surge of emotion-driven energy dissapated. He felt more defeated by Ges's composure than he had by his father's censure, though that had stung too, however much time he'd had to get used to it.

"Stasya was always the jealous type."

Aral grunted, drawn back out of his thoughts. hunching into his high-backed chair. "Not of my attention."

"In a way, you resemble him," Ges said suddenly, tilting his head.

"Not really."

"Yes, you do. In aura, rather than looks. Powerful. Commanding," his velvety eyes looked him over, darkening with some unidentified emotion that nevertheless sent an odd wave of awareness through Aral's stomach. He raised his head, eyes wary, trying to decipher the expression on his friend's face in the cloudy natural light pouring in through the windows.

Ges's face lightened, as though whatever he was thinking was of no importance. "The only good thing to come out of my sister's wasted life," he said, ignoring the tensing of Aral's jaw, "was her marriage to you. A fine friend to commiserate with." He reached over, his hand passing over Aral's in a quick, faint touch as he took the half-empty glass of water. He raised it in a toast and finished it off.

"Come with me into town. Mikah Vorovski's celebrating his entrance into the service."

Aral had no trouble translating this as yet another reason to drink. He snorted, rubbed the back of his neck with the hand that Ges had brushed, as if casually taking it out of reach as he leaned back in his chair. Ges's habitual lack of concern for people's personal space was a touch irritating right now.

"Count Vorovski's probably just happy Mikah isn't his heir." He used the table to brace himself, pushing up out of the chair. "Viktor would overshadow him even if he were the younger son."

"No doubt."

Aral considered his balance, testing his reactions. His short, stocky body was responding to him in almost the usual time, and his brain was getting back up to speed. Ges rose with him. "I'm not sure I should drink while I'm still hung-over," he admitted. "My father..."

"Won't be there," Ges overrode this. "Whatever there was between you and my dearly departed sister, you've lost her now. You've earned the right to some alcohol-induced peace."

'Won't be peace, though...'

"It's not as though you have to report in anytime soon," Ges pointed out persuasively. "Nor do I,  
actually."

"How rare," Aral said, buying time to think.

"Yes, nice, isn't it?" Ges murmured. "Come. Get out of this ancient, creaking house with its gloomy atmosphere." He shifted, leaning his weight against the table, edging closer to him to study his face.

"What holds you back?" He smiled mockingly. "Your father has never approved of much that you do, my friend," he said knowingly. His smile lessened as all amusement at his needling vanished, and Aral's spine went very straight and tense. "My apologies," he offered, shrugging slightly. "But at some point you have to stop caring what everyone around you thinks."

There was no sound in the expansive room, draped as it was with thick curtains and heavy fabrics on all of the furniture that was not polished wood, and every word was absorbed far before it could reach any prying servants' ears, for they stayed well away from Lord Vorkosigan when he gave them a certain look. It was just as well, as his tone became a growl that would only have frightened them anyway. "Take care," he said in warning.

Dark lashes lowered in a look that was serious, but not afraid.

Aral unclenched his jaw and grasped at his self-control. "It's not so easy for everyone else to detatch themselves as you have. Not that...they might not wish to," he conceded the often-unacknowledged point.

Ges smiled again, that aggravatingly knowing smile, smug in his certainty of one particular man's true nature. "I can teach you how. It's far less painful."

Less painful...not painless, Aral noted, realizing his hand was still clenched at his side. He uncurled his fingers, letting out his breath. Ges watched him with unconcealed satisfaction, already assured of his answer.

"Clean up," he recommended. "You'll scare the ladies."

"I'm not interested in impressing them," he returned sourly, but ran a hand over his hair and grimaced at the odd angles it stuck up at.

"Perhaps not," Ges said, sounding unconcerned. "But the smell will certainly not improve matters. Your first trip out of the house in days and you stink like one of your mountain-folk." He gripped Aral's arm, shoved his towards the door, and the stairs beyond it to where his room-and shower-awaited him.

"Time for your first experiment."

"I won't be drinking," Aral said over his shoulder.

It was to be the first lie of many he told himself in the days that followed.

.

_A/N: Why didn't I ever post this...? I must have forgotten I had it. Posting now, before comp. dies..._


End file.
